


towards the death of our ignorance

by slow_soda_sips (nap_princess)



Category: El Hoyo | The Platform (2019), the hole (2019)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Violence, Mentions of assaults, Mentions of close call rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:01:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24752056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nap_princess/pseuds/slow_soda_sips
Summary: There is lunacy, and then there is glory, but he's only fighting windmills— Goreng-centric
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	towards the death of our ignorance

**towards the death of our ignorance**

* * *

Goreng wakes up on a bed made of stone. An old man tells him things, thinks like: they are on level 48, it is the start of the month, and they should feast to stay alive.

"What are we going to eat?"

"The leftovers of others, obviously.”

“Obviously?”

“ _Obviously_."

* * *

Trimagasi is a well of knowledge.

Goreng cannot help but raise an amused eyebrow at everything the old man sprouts. He thinks Trimagasi is full of it, but wants to know more. "What else can you tell me?"

"That's the last question I'll answer, speaking tires me out. It's not fair for me to give you more information than I get."

“Not fair?”

Trimagasi nods, done for the day.

 _Fair,_ Goreng echoes the word in his head.

But what is fair in _The Hole_?

* * *

Trimagasi gets on his knees to eat, the gesture reminds Goreng of church, of praying to a greater power above, of not seeing but believing.

He does not believe.

That is, until an apple comes as a lesson for his first day, and the remains of fine wine is Trimagasi’s reward.

* * *

There are times where they hoarded and greed and glutton over scrapes; it is then, does Goreng wonder if Trimagasi is his reflection.

Or, perhaps, what Goreng _will be_ if he were to spent months layered on months in _The Hole._ Maybe he will be just as guarded, just as cynical and just as unkind.

Maybe he will be a murderer too.

But, please God, he hopes not.

* * *

He witnesses one of the first few horrors of _The Hole_ ; eating scraps, a dead man falling down an endless pit. But the one that scares him the most involves Miharu. A woman he's met less than five minutes ago is dragged off to be raped.

Her screams send panic into his heart and his teeth grind as his jaw clenches.

"Stop it! _Stop it!_ Leave her alone!"

Trimagasi is unphased. "They'll have her for a few days."

A few days? No. _No_ —!

The screams of men are exchanged and Miharu appears a moment later, red liquid decorating her face like war paint.

"What —?"

She climbs on top of the slab, knees tucked and eyes fogged over. Goreng wants to ask if she's alright, but that answer is obvious.

She's not okay. No one is okay. Not in this awful place is.

* * *

Trimagasi asks him if he believes in God, the circumstance leaves Goreng smirking around the edges of his mouth.

He understands where the old man is coming from; a year without the feel of the sun and the caress of the wild winds can make any consciously being question God's existence.

"Do you?" Goreng asks back, quite fond of their back and forth chatter. Trimagasi knows so much about Philosophy in the cruellest ways.

"This month." The old man states.

Goreng only smiles and nods. So be it.

* * *

Their friendship deteriorated the moment he opened his eyes, trust turns to mistrust, and fondness becomes sour. 

On level 171, Goreng is bound and gagged, a knife is pressed to his throat by a person he calls a friend.

Goreng is told about hunger as tears prick his eyes and his cries are muffled. He prays for a week or more. Nothing happens.

Nothing, except for a new name.

He is called 'snail' now; and he is purged to be _escargot._

* * *

It takes him 40 days to embrace conflict and crime.

* * *

The taste of human flesh is veil in his mouth. Blood smears on his lips and his teeth and his tongue, and the hands that feed him are just are bloodied as his. Just as dirtied. Just as sinful. 

And yet, these hands are also kind. The hands of a mother. The hands that cup water from a flowing tap and hydrates him, like a wilting flower.

She feeds him chunks and then bite-sized bits of his old cellmate. Goreng does not fight it.

“Thank you.” He says instead. _“Thank you.”_

* * *

"Eat," Trimagasi says in a fever dream, drenched in red like the blood that spilt from his mouth. "Or be eaten?"

The way the one man smiles is unsettling. He should be dead, his soul departed to either Hell or Heaven; but then again, Trimagasi only believed in God in level 48.

But they're not there anymore, are they? They’re on level 171, and level 171 is nothing but an abyss of screams and maggots.

'What are you doing here?' Goreng wants to asks but doesn't. He swallows his question down. 

Trimagasi is not here. Trimagasi is dead. An illusion, _obviously_.

"We're the same now." Trimagasi says, his smile as ghostly as he is.

"Go away," Goreng pleads as the smell of gas tickles his nostrils.

"I can't. I won't." The old man says. "I'm part of you now."

Goreng closes his eyes and thinks about how Trimagasi should have worshipped for another month.

* * *

His third month in, he fools himself into believing he will spend it in the arms of a lover. He does not know her name, but her skin is soft and her mouth tastes nothing like he rotting flesh he's had to consume.

But when he awakens, he's brought back to reality.

Level 33. A dark-haired woman named Imoguiri and sausage dog called Ramesses II are his new cellmates. He will be safe.

Or, at least, he thinks he will, until Imoguiri speaks of guns and crossbows, knives and torches, golf clubs, baseball bats, the list goes one.

Goreng does not know how Imoguiri will survive, much less keep her pet alive. But then again, she is one of the administers for this limbo.

* * *

Imoguiri calls this place _the VSC_ — Vertical Self-Management Center — and Goreng doesn't know if he likes the sound of that better or if he'll refer to it as _The Hole_ for the rest of his time here.

Pigsty. Pit. A spontaneous place to achieve a sense of solidarity — what difference does it make? It’s all the same, anyway.

* * *

Imoguiri tops her salads on plates and organises her patties around her vegetables. It sickens him. How ignorant can she be? How privileged can she be? 

Rations? Does she think rations will save the hundreds of people starving below them? How can she not see she's caused deaths?

* * *

It's only when Goreng is nursing Miharu is when he wonders how long does it take for a wound to heal. How long does it take to stop bleeding?

How long? _How long?_ His thigh is still seeping 30 days later. His thigh is still hurting and haunting and aching.

He does not have an answer. So he concentrates on Miharu and her well-being. He memorises her face and the vertical scar that starts from her brow and ends on the tops of her cheekbone.

* * *

“What do you know of the boy?” Goreng asks after he caught a glimpse of Miharu descending below.

“There is no boy.”

Goreng stares.

"Miharu isn’t who she says she is. She wanted to be Asian Marilyn Monroe. She came here with a ukulele." Imoguiri says, teary eyes at her dog.

Goreng wonders how long it took for Miharu to trade her instruments for a sharp weapon. And then he wonders if he would ever hear her sing.

He's never once even heard her speak, only scream.

* * *

It's only been 4 months, but he's already witnessed countless of deaths.

It's only been 4 months, but he's seen enough bloodshed to last for a lifetime.

It’s only been 4 months, but he’s lost another cellmate.

He spends a whole 30 days in solidarity, exactly like Imoguiri said _The Hole_ was designed for.

He does not try to strike up a conversation with anyone. Not above or below. No one.

Because Trimagasi had said so. Because — _"We do not speak to the people below us, we do not speak to the people above us. Only to people like us, of equal plane."_

And no one is equal to him. They’re all dead.

* * *

Goreng loses perception of time. Seconds feel like minutes, minutes like hours, hours like days and days like centuries.

He eats again. Eats a person. Eats the flesh of a cancer patient. Eats the cartilage of her ears and the fats of her cheeks, the muscles in her biceps and the veins on her limbs, he devours the strings her intestines like sausages, like her stupid dog, but leaves her chest because the blotchy red irritation is too much for him. Even when he is starving.

Even when he is mad and lonely.

Trimagasi speaks to him. He does not speak back.

* * *

Baharat is yelling. Yelling, yelling, yelling when Goreng awakens. One more month. One more fucking month, and then he'll be free.

But Baharat has different plans. He has rope and lungs that roar like a lion and sleeves that are ripped.

"I'm on fire, and you are here!" Baharat says.

Goreng hates waking up last. Why has he never woken up before his cellmate?

They're on level 6, and yet Baharat is not satisfied.

"Help me climb to the top!"

Why?

_Why?_

What does Baharat know that Goreng doesn’t? What does Baharat see that Goreng can’t? What —

"What do you want to climb up for?" Level 5 asks.

* * *

Goreng thinks he is _just like_ Trimagasi, so close that he can taste freedom. He doesn't even want that stupid accredited diploma anymore. He just wants to stay alive.

But will Goreng really be able to leave so easily? Will he be able to escape with all the knowledge fed to him. He’s devoured so much. Who’s to say they will let him live?

* * *

They're on level 6 but they still eat shit. They're on level 6 but they're still treated like shit. They're on level 6, and Goreng thinks that they _are_ shit. The scum of the earth.

He does not believe in God.

There is no God. Not in Hell.

* * *

Goreng has never fought this hard, never expanded so much of his energy.

And as he threatens and harms and kills countless people — people with string instruments and surfboards and their wheelchair-bound bodies — he thinks back to the conversation he had with Trimagasi.

 _"You are a murderer. You are not someone who's afraid, who is forced into this situation. Do not blame the people above, nor the circumstances, not even the Administration. It's you._ **_You._ ** _You are solely responsible.”_

Then he thinks how he is killing without anger, without resentment. 

“I don't enjoy it." He reasons, hitting someone on the head. The bed frame shakes. The skull cracks. The sound is sickening.

* * *

Like the many cycles in his life, Goreng loses a cellmate to death and gains a new one.

Baharat is dead, and the little boy is actually a little girl.

Goreng’s face is bloodied, his teeth knocked in, and his brain throbbing. What will become of him now?

* * *

They sink and sink and sink, darkness surrounds them. And he can see the fear in a little girl's eyes.

She lies on his lap, like a helpless lamb, like a child needing her mother. 

The little girl is the message, and he stares above, into the light. 

.

.

.

And then he walks off with a dead man.

* * *

There is lunacy, and then there is glory, but he's only fighting windmills.

 _Don Quixote_ is a tale of a man who is delirious. He is a fool and mad, and yet; people allow it, feeding into his fantasies. Crowds come and gather, and if they are not jeering, then they are laughing; clapping and encouraging his nonsense.

He thinks they are by his side.

They are not.

"Yes!" The people cheer. "Entertain us! Entertain us!"

* * *

**end**

**Author's Note:**

> Notes 1: I have never read _Don Quixote_ but the saying “You’re fighting windmills,” is such a nice insult.
> 
> Notes 2: The names crack me up. 'Goreng' means 'fried' in my language and 'trimagasi' sounds like 'thank you'.
> 
> — 16 June 2020


End file.
